The Covington City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on a proposed agreement intended to quell a two-decade-long turf war between the fire department and the fire district outside the city. The battle between the Covington Fire Department and the 12th Fire District -- over which department can collect millages and fight fires in areas annexed into the city -- has spurred six pending lawsuits filed in the last year and outlasted the two prior city administrations despite mediation and state legislation intended solely to address the issue.

An intergovernmental agreement hashed out by the new Covington city administration and the 12th Fire District was passed Monday night by the fire district's board and will be presented at tonight's council meeting.

The 15-year agreement, written by city attorney Julian Rodrigue and the fire district's attorney Robert A. Barnett, redraws the boundaries of both fire departments, shifting some areas just inside city limits to the fire district and including certain areas just outside the edge of the city into the city fire department's coverage area. The city and the district would contract the services to each other, at an essentially equal price tag of around $36,000 a year.

"This will hopefully clarify, in writing, what best serves the people of Fire District 12 and the city of Covington and forever put to rest any misunderstanding that may have existed," Barnett said.

For 20 years, the city department and the district have fought over millages and service areas, with the district claiming that its boundaries were drawn when it opened in 1986 and it was entitled to taxes in those areas of the parish, even after annexation into the city. The city, though, claimed a right to tax and service the same areas after it annexed them. For years, certain neighborhoods and businesses were taxed to both the district and the city, and the situation was resolved only after litigation.

In the past year, Barnett has filed six lawsuits on behalf of the district, one for each of the properties annexed into the city. They will all be dismissed if the city signs the agreement, he said.

Though both the fire district and the city say the agreement is long overdue, it is not expected to pass without fireworks at the council meeting.

Former Mayor Candace Watkins wrote the council late last week, arguing that the draft of the agreement was crafted without input from the Covington Fire Department, finished just days before the meeting and without a meeting for public scrutiny. She questions the city's motivation for entering into the agreement since, she argues, the law favors the city's position in the pending suits and the district has refused to cooperate in the past.

She asks that the council not pass the agreement and rather write agreements for each individual annexation to most benefit the city.

Barnett said the district has been attempting to reach a resolution, unsuccessfully until now, for a more than a decade.

The controversy on the matter resurfaced at a recent City Council meeting, when the council voted to approved a development agreement for a Walmart Neighborhood Market on U.S. 190, which annexes the property but gives the fire millage and service to Fire District 12.

The city argued that the sales tax generated by annexation would far surpass the 10-mill tax the city fire department would collect and that Walmart was reluctant to annex under a threat of litigation from the 12th Fire District.

But former city councilman Trey Blackall gave an impassioned argument that that city has "contracted away our fire service."